Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the matter of public importance, and it is certainly important to the residents of Lalor. Sixty-six per cent of workers in Lalor use their car to get to work. Like those people who live in the electorate of Scullin, and like the member for Scullin pointed out, my electorate is in the outer suburbs of Melbourne on the opposite side of the city to the electorate of Scullin. In the outer west of Melbourne we have limited public transport. We have incredible high-growth areas where we have affordable housing but limited jobs, which means that we have people travelling a long way to get to work. We have people travelling whilst juggling child care, school drop-offs and the trip to work. They will be hurt by the measures put in place by this government. They will be seriously hurt, and they are feeling ambushed today by this government, because this government promised no new or increased taxes. I ask, as I asked many months ago, was that a solemn promise? Was it as solemn as the no cuts to education promise? Was it as solemn as the no cuts to health promise? It is very difficult these days to tell which promise those opposite meant and which they did not. We hear a lot about the promise they have kept, but the promises they made that they are breaking are mounting up day by day.

The people who live in my electorate are getting more and more cynical about this government. They are very cynical after hearing the campaign the coalition ran on cost-of-living pressures. They are very cynical when they pick up a newspaper to find out that the Treasurer has said that poor people do not drive cars. Sixty-six per cent in my electorate of Lalor, with over 200,000 people, drive cars to work every day. The people of Lalor, of course, are most concerned about the compounding nature of the impacts that they are being hit with in this government's budget, because layer upon layer, each level hurts more and more. This is all in a context where wages growth has been the slowest in 17 years. Yet every day the people are going to be hit harder and harder by the budget that this government is determined to get passed.

I am reminded of the rationale about that budget emergency that the coalition have screamed about in this chamber for months. No-one is swallowing that. The facts have been checked. No matter how many times you try to force feed us we will not swallow it anymore. What is clear, however, are this government's priorities. What is clear from their budget is that the ordinary Australian is not the priority of this government. I go to the Australian Automobile Association which, of course, has had a bit to say today. The Chief Executive, Andrew McKellar, has called the petrol move weak, sneaky and tricky. I think there are many residents of Lalor who would be giving him a 'hear, hear' today, because that is exactly how they feel about this tricky tax on petrol.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister could not even fess up and admit that the effect of the announcement would be that if the government fails to get its fuel tax legislation passed the collected excise would be handed back not to the millions of Australian motorists who paid the tax but to the oil companies. It reminds me of the GST and what is happening to the premiers and to the states with the notion of, 'We'll do this. We'll cut your funding and we'll blackmail you into a conversation about a GST.' This is exactly the same. This parliament is being blackmailed by bringing this in through regulation with absolutely no respect for the parliament.

If that was not bad enough, we discovered today through the Abbott government's own repeal day documents that the petrol tax ambush will be even wider. The Prime Minister who stood here again in question time today asking for a mature debate has demonstrated that his behaviour is more like a child holding their parent to ransom. Only in this case it is this parliament and the families in electorates all over this country being held to ransom. I stand here on this matter of public importance to say that the people of Lalor will treat this with the cynicism it deserves.

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